User talk:MarcusBritish

Wikmaps grant request : we need your support

Hello Marcus,
Long time not seen. I learned from the GIS tutorial experience and push once more for better maps on Wikipedia: I just publicly announced a grant request on the Map Workshop talkpage. Please take a look, and support us on meta ! Cheer ! Yug (talk) 12:25, 19 October 2013 (UTC)

Hi. Thanks for the information. I haven't used QGIS for quite some time.. early 2012 or so.. think I've uninstalled it, actually, as I lost interest in the things I was thinking of working on and haven't regained momentum due to lack of encouragement and motivation. I may possibly come back to them in the future, depends how things go, my interest in things tends to wane and rise sporadically. Your proposal there sounds interesting, and I definitely wish you luck in securing that grant as well as 3 months away from home to work on it. I'm not sure how the Grants system works, with regards to if you just wanted me to read it or to somehow support your proposal?

On a side note, I see you're involved in language teaching.. any tips on how I can learn that lovely but tricky French language fast.. lol, it would be such a benefit to my interests in Napoleonic history to be able to enjoy reading original French documents, but I find it frustrating to relearn after almost 20 years. Salut! Ma®©usBritish^{chat} 18:34, 19 October 2013 (UTC)

Hello. For French learning, there is some progress in the field of intercomprehension, meaning the focus on similar aspects of 2 languages to ease communication and learning, Yet, you will need to fight to integrate / refresh the 40% of words which are completely new for English speakers.

For the GIS, yes, I remember, I made great effort for learning QGIS and writing down the tutorials. This efforts literally exhausted me before I could complete the serie. I was quite frustrated when I saw the result, MissMJ and yourself not able to smoothly learn the whole workflow. I just returned to GIS map making in early 2013, with QGis, and was unsatisfied by the poor SVG export. So I started to explore new tech specially designed to generated web apps maps. Sound promising. And.... easier. A single Makefile can contain the whole list of gdal command, so you edit a bit the makefile with WNES geocoordinates, run it, and it design you a new map. Spoiler alert : it's not exactly that simple since someone have to fight to build the workflow first.... And that's what we are willing to do. And yes, even your experience of failing to learn GIS/QGIS would be a valuable testimony in support of our project. We are designing a tool which will make GIS design [what make cool maps], SIMPLE. Yug (talk) 20:33, 19 October 2013 (UTC)

Ah, sounds interesting. Has the QGIS software seen many updates and improvements over the last 18 months or so to make it more powerful, flexible, reliable or easier to handle? I think the problem I had was lack of support at their end, no user guides and the lack of a GUI made it awful to use. I think I over-estimated the complexity of producing SVGs also, as it seems using QGIS, Photoshop and Illustrator to produce maps requires a lot of intimate knowledge of the three programs in order to get really good results. I was rushing into things and failing to create decent maps, as I'm generally too impatient to learn all that software in baby steps from "hello, world" to advanced procedures needed to create multi-layer rasters and such.

I have a French speaking and reading CD course, had it tucked away for a while, I'm sure I'll find the willpower to actually work through it one day soon. It's supposed to go from beginner to advanced and takes about 3 months to work through through in weekly steps with real French speakers on the CD, not slow and patronising French-speaking Englishmen... a daunting task, but more in-depth than you average "tourist" standard of conversation examples.

Can you advise me what to do, where to go with regards leaving a testimony? I'll try to follow by example when I see other editors leave testimonies, so that I don't muck it up. Thanks. Ma®©usBritish^{chat} 23:54, 19 October 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for the answer

I appreciate your response at Wikipedia:Templates for discussion/Log/2013 November 5 though the discussion seems to have gotten off on a tangent. It seems that the editors there want to take the discussion to Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Video games/Article guidelines#System requirements. I don't know if I have the right to ask, but I'd appreciate if you could make your arguments there as you did at the TfD Discussion. Cheers. 155.97.192.173 (talk) 07:59, 11 November 2013 (UTC)

There's no point my commenting. The discussion is highly unbalanced and too many detractors to the use of system requirements are leading the debate, also the 27.x.x.x IP is embarrassing for the people who support the idea, with his frivolous remarks, playing into the WP:VG teams hands; to be frank, I wouldn't be half surprised if their members are not emailing one another off-wiki, goading other members to oppose the template, as the whole discussion appears very juvenile and is underpinned by the same people from previous debates. The entire "consensus" is a massive example of WP:RANDY, and Masem should be ashamed of himself, as a sysop, for encouraging such behaviour pro-actively. I won't debate with admins in territory they're clearly manipulating to their own ends; it lacks good faith or a truly productive consensus. Not worth my time until the discussion is opened via a WP:RFC to the wider community, instead of on a WP talkpage where a cult of clowns presides. Ma®©usBritish^{chat} 20:35, 11 November 2013 (UTC)

Interesting. Well thank you for taking the time to write back. I noticed 27.x.x.x IP is making it very hard to make a legitimate argument, but I haven't noticed this form of underhand cooperation at work as well. I'll take it from the wiser Wikipedian and find something better to do. 155.97.192.173 (talk) 05:32, 12 November 2013 (UTC)